Family Tech Blog

Tag: cyberbully

  • Instagram’s Comment Controls Can Help Parents Breathe a Little Easier

    Instagram’s Comment Controls Can Help Parents Breathe a Little Easier

    Cyberbullying and suicide are two of the most dangerous symptoms of our digital culture. Suicide is now the third leading cause of death among teens and half of all teens admit to having been bullied online. One of the major ways these bullies find their foothold is through comments on social media. My advice to parents is always to keep their kids away from online comments as much as possible. Instagram’s new comment control feature will help moms and dads be more effective. Their new live video reporting feature could even save lives.

    Comment Controls

    Instagram wants you to have control over who sees what you post. They’re also giving you control over what people say about your selfies and food pics. Well, not as much what they say but who is saying it. If you are concerned about random strangers contacting your kids on Instagram through their comments section you can have them set their post comments to private. There are actually four settings, Everyone, Your Followers, People You Follow, or People You Follow and Your Followers. These settings allow you to set a smaller group of folks who can comment on your kids’ posts. This can be very helpful but only if your kid agrees with your motives. These settings aren’t password protected so they can be reset at any time. The best way to ensure they’re keeping their settings as you’d want them is to check in on who’s commenting on them. If you don’t recognize them from your child’s account then you should ask about it.

    Live Video Reporting

    Instagram has also added a reporting feature to highlight when someone may be considering self-harm or harming others while filming a live video. If the video is reported they’ll be shown a message that encourages them to reach out for help. Instagram has trained staff available 24/7 to accept messages from people who reach out via the Instagram Live reporting feature. Their hope is to give friends a way to help friends stay safe and maybe even choose to stay alive. What a great way to be encouraged that people care about you. This feature is also available on Facebook Live.

    What Parents Should Know

    Some social media sites are leaning towards the most public and open atmosphere possible (here’s looking at you Snapchat) which can be dangerous for our kids. Instagram and Facebook seem to be taking notice of our desire to keep some things private or in our chosen circle of friends. Understanding and using these features is very important for parents as we work to keep our kids safe online. Be sure to keep yourself informed.

    If you’re looking for even more info about how to protect your children online, you can contact me (Michael) about hosting a workshop to train you and your friends on family internet safety. Home workshops are free and are available all over the country through Skype. Email me at BecauseFamily@gmail.com to learn more.

  • Should Your Kids Use Sarahah?

    Should Your Kids Use Sarahah?

    Sarahah is an app that snuck up the charts over the past weeks. It was originally put on the app store in June but is already sitting at number one on the free app charts in iOS. This app allows you to leave anonymous comments about people. The idea is that, since it’s completely anonymous, you can be honest and say what you really think. This can obviously lead to some really encouraging and uplifting posts, maybe it could cause a crush to reveal themselves, but definitely, it will cause mean people to do what mean people do. The risk of bullying on this app is very very high.

    This isn’t the first app of its kind but none have risen in popularity so quickly. “Sarahah” is the Arabic word for honesty, the app’s website describes the goal of the app simply:

    “Sarahah helps you in discovering your strengths and areas for improvement by receiving honest feedback from your employees and your friends in a private manner.”

    Again, the app is very new but development is happening fast (five updates since its June 13th release) and the app promises more features to come. Something like a planet icon on the bottom of the screen seems to hint at a future explore or discover page and they mention on their site that they’re studying an option to allow users to reply to the comments that come through Sarahah. The appeal of the app is obvious, most of us wish we could say whatever we are thinking to someone and there are also those of us that wish we could hear exactly what people think of us all the time. This may be fun or even cathartic for grown adults, but when teens and tweens are in the throes of development, hormones, and emotion, is this app a good idea?

    What Parents Should Know

    My Facebook feed has begun to blow up with Sarahah messages that have been screenshotted and shared. Most of the ones I see are people celebrating a super nice comment they got from someone but I’ve seen a few that were laughing at the commenter who was being a jerk. Those I’ve seen on Sarahah were adults, mostly because I don’t follow many young people on Facebook but there is no doubt, seeing this app climb the charts like it did, that there are younger users too. Parents should be cautioned that this app is rated 17+ for unrestricted web access, profanity, and adult humor. The issue is that since anyone who wants can post whatever they want (it’s called user generated content) it’s next to impossible to ensure there will be no adult content on the app. Secondly, I warn parents, as I did above, about the dangers of bullying through this app. The bully follows our kids around in their pocket and this app gives them the ability to say whatever they want without any way to identify who they are.

    There is already an epidemic of kids feeling like they can say whatever they want online without consequence. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case because the one reading what is written feels real emotions based on what’s been said. The ability to be completely anonymous could cause kids to be even crueler and could even lead to kids who wouldn’t say anything mean to some one actually doing it because they don’t see how they can be identified as the culprit. You can block users who you don’t want to message you anymore but once you’ve done that the damage could already be done.

    My advice is to disallow this app on your kids’ phones. You can do it the old fashion way by looking at their phone yourself and uninstalling that app if you see it. You can also set age restrictions in the app store or parental control/restrictions options on your kids’ devices. This should block Sarahah since it’s rated 17+. As an adult, maybe you enjoy this app, I would advise caution to you too. Not only are you putting yourself out there to be spoken to anonymously by anyone who could say whatever they want but you’re also setting an example for your kids.